The 92nd Infantry Division and the Italian Campaign in World War II

By Daniel K. Gibran. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2001, $29.95 softcover.

Lt Col Harold E. Raugh, Jr., United States Army (Retd) reviews these books exclusively for DJ.

The 92nd Infantry Division was the only all-black division to see combat in the European Theatre of Operations during World War II. Activated on 15 October 1942 under the command of Major General Edward M. Almond, the 92nd Infantry Division deployed its first of three regiments to Italy in July 1944, where the Division fought until the end of the war.
Many of the black soldiers, as one would expect at the time, were poorly educated and from the segregated South. These factors, according to Daniel K. Gibran, coupled with a lack of trust in their white officers, caused low morale and malingering and the Division's poor performance in combat. The author contends that "lock-stitched into a conceptual framework that embraced the genetic inferiority of the Negro race, . . . , Almond's command of the 92nd Infantry Division was doomed to failure from its inception." The author's mustering of many unsupported opinions and the apparent selective use of evidence does not conclusively prove this assertion.
This book, despite its misleading title, is not a comprehensive study of the 92nd Infantry Division or of its World War II operations. The author focuses on "[t]he story of the white commander [Almond] who led his troops into battle," and secondly, "[t]he acts of bravery of two black junior officers [Lieutenants Vernon Baker and John Fox] on the rugged and treacherous terrain of Italy" that later merited award of the Medal of Honour. The US Armed Forces, rather than being condemned for activities practiced by the society at large, should be recognized for being in the forefront of racial integration and equal opportunity in the United States. Bias and discrimination have no place on the battlefield or in books.